tldr; Budget RTX 4050/4060 entry point. Plastic build and mediocre thermals but hard to beat on value for first gaming laptop.
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Best praise vs top criticism for Acer Nitro V 15 ANV15-51
“I own both a Nitro V15 4060 and a TUF F16 5050. Somethings you must be aware about the Nitro V15. It has a 135W power brick (the TUF has a 280W brick) and the GPU is limited to 75W. It has no Advanced Optimus and no MUX switch (though, if you connect an external HDMI display, it will link directly to your GPU). It also has a very weird layout where the GPU runs only 4 PCIe lanes instead of the regular 8 (though, if the 5050 is running Gen 5, 4 lanes should be enough, but on the 4060 it runs Gen 4. Other than that, it's a pretty decent laptop. The screen doesn't come with great colors from factory (it looks very washed out), but it's a bright screen and it looks fairly good after you're able to tweak the colors (I reduced the overall brightness and increased the saturation, that it made it look eons better). It also has very good blacks for an IPS screen and low IPS Glow. The laptop runs very cool thanks to the low power, it's a solid performer and will get you through any triple A title at 1080p. Here in my country, it's actually the cheapest notebook you can buy with an 8GB GPU and there's pretty much nothing else at its price range (the TUF F16 comes right after in terms of value, but it's a generally more expensive product). It's actually a little bit awkward that this is the first time I've seen someone mention this laptop given how massively popular it is. It's like people on reddit live in a bubble where everyone only has 5080 and 5090 laptops.”
“If $529 is the price of that laptop I would definitely avoid it. Get this Acer Nitro V 16 instead https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Nitro-V-16-1920-x-1200-WUXGA-180Hz-Gaming-Laptop-AMD-Ryzen-5-16GB-RAM-512GB-Obsidian-Black/16518616112 It's a bit more expensive but it's worth it at this price point. It will run Minecraft and Roblox with ease and more in the future if your son wants to play more graphically demanding games. The only issue I've seen with this laptop is that the battery drains while playing in perfomance or turbo mode. If the power setting is set to balanced, there is a slight loss in performance but the battery will not drain.”
467 Reddit opinions analyzed • Last updated 2/24/2026